This meeting – which isn’t ‘for the time being’ part of the TTIP trade negotiations – has been welcomed by the chemical industry, according to Chemical Watch.

CHEM Trust is rather less convinced:

However, NGOs in Europe have expressed their concerns about the impacts of any formal co-operation between the EU and US on endocrine disruptors.

Gwynne Lyons, policy director of ChemTrust and a nominated stakeholder expert of the Echa endocrine disruptor expert group, says: “The EU process is moving very slowly already, and regulatory collaboration with the US can only make things worse. The US system has failed to regulate chemicals, including endocrine disruptors, effectively, so the US will almost certainly be a barrier to progress,” she adds.

Ms Lyons says co-operation on developing test methods and prioritisation methodology might sound useful, but there is a “hidden agenda to make sure only the most potent, and probably no longer used, chemicals fall under a blunted regulatory axe”

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